PlayStation 3 sells 525,000 over Black Friday week

PS Vita moves 160,000, outsold by both DS and 3DS

Sony's revealed its Black-Friday-week sales for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, and while retailer discounts pushed PS3 sales up 15 percent from last year it still landed in the middle of the pack. The various PS3 bundles sold more than 525,000 units over the week, sitting squarely between Wii U's 400,000 and Xbox 360's 750,000.

Of course, if you put Wii U and original Wii sales together for 700,000, Sony came in third, but let's not get into price point and life cycle comparisons. Instead, let's talk about the PlayStation Vita, which moved 160,000 units over the week, compared to 250,000 DS and 275,000 3DS systems. On second thought, maybe that's not a great subject for conversation.

Hundreds of thousands of sales are always nice, but Sony's console numbers are middling compared to its competitors. Fortunately for the Japanese electronics giant, consumers were much more excited to try the free-game-toting PlayStation Plus service this year than last, with 259 percent more subscription sales over last year's Black Friday. Xbox Live Gold subscriptions grew by 50 percent in the same period.